Alex raises the pocket mirror
and sees his distorted reflection, scrapes his teeth with a carved beech stick,
rubs his armpits, wets his face and then shaves with the last blade from the
damp jute sack. He looks in the mirror and wipes away the blood, straightens up
finally, coughs and listens to the vibration of the mucous threads in his
bronchial tubes. The air smells of winter. He presses his hands into the small
of his back, looks at the towers of the thermal power station on the opposite
bank, the rubbish in the reeds – thin branches, a snow-covered bit of rubble,
the frozen body of a fish. He coughs once again and spits in the river.

The trailer is over there, in
the shadow of the bridge piers. The other campers are long gone, are coming
back in the spring or never, as some of them long ago grew old. His lips
tremble. Two more hours to midday
he thinks. He has cleared the narrow path, extinguished the fire in the drum,
trimmed the struggling bush again and poured the old petrol from the power unit
into a water bottle. Clouds are moving across the sky. A dog crouches by the
path along the river.

During the night he dreamed of
Nana. She was wearing her shroud. Her body was tiny and withered, with hands
like rusty rakes, lying flat on top of one another and tied over the dried-out
breast. She lay on the bier in a room with cold electric light. When Alex had
finally woken up, he was lying with a buzzing head as if in a fever and tossing
and turning between the stinking sheets. He felt for her body, tugged the
sleeping bag into place, took her hand and stroked it.

Nana, he whispered.

Now he’s crouching on a
boulder by the river bank, screwing up his eyes and in the midst of the grey
icy morning is listening into himself. They’re alone; the first walkers will
not come until later, only the bedraggled dog is roaming around in the reeds. It
urinates against the boundary post and finally limps off in the direction of
the wood, head down, tail drooping, a black wound on its backside.

Alex switches on the camping
stove, stirs coffee into the cloudy water and places the pills from the
dispenser on the narrow table, two big yellow ones, which taste bitter, and a
sugar-covered white one with the name of a bankrupt company on it. Nana is
huddled on the mattress and, mouth open, is listening to a symphony concert on
the radio. Alex sees her lids blink, twice.

Do you think so, he says.

Another blink.

It’s all right, says Alex.
Just a moment.

He bends down and takes one of
the disposable syringes out of the refrigerator. Inside him everything has been
tense for the last couple of days; he has never had such cramps, never has his
head been so empty and yet so heavy, so full of sharp pains, tweaks and this restlessness.
Sometimes he thinks he can hear voices. That would be it. If he was hearing
voices, he wouldn’t take another step, but it’s only a kind of murmuring, and
usually it ebbs away to nothing.

He presses the cannula onto
the syringe, then pushes it almost as far as it will go into the little bottle
with the morphine. The stuff is too weak to harm Nana; it doesn’t even take
away her pain. He hesitates, then walks the short distance from the stove to
the bed, hears the tapping of his feet on the laminate. Sometimes he sees
himself as he clumsily tries to open a fastener or scrape together pills that
have fallen on the floor. As he sings, reads something out or holds Nana’s
hand; as he supports her and talks to her, almost, as if he was trying with his
spittle to stick something together which has burst into millions upon millions
of hard parts.

Nana huddles on the mattress
and stares at the naked wall. With her index finger she taps the frame of the
old bed, a metronome of veins and sinews, skin stretched across it.

Here’s coffee.

A weak blink.

I’ll put sugar in for you.

He sits down on the edge of
the mattress and looks at her, then wipes her mouth with the corner of the
blanket and places the pills one after the other on her tongue. He leans over a
little and kisses her slack eyelids. She blinks and smacks her lips; he brings
the dirty cup to her lips and watches as the coffee dribbles down her chin and
leaves finely ramified stains on the blanket. The music goes on playing.
Mendelssohn, thinks Alex. He didn’t like Mendelssohn before. Today he’s glad
that Mendelssohn is filling this emptiness.

The dog’s back again outside.

A blink.

I don’t think, he says, that
it belongs to anyone. I think the dog is alone.

A blink repeated three times.

It’s OK, says Alex. When it
comes again, we’ll take it in.

The plate from her birthday is
still on the table, white bread with smoked fish and a couple of leaves of
lettuce. Alex doesn’t want to eat any more. Nana can’t. For the dog, thinks
Alex; he must make sure not to forget to put the plate outside the door later,
before they leave. He sees a spot on the wall and wipes across it with his
sleeve. He puts the cups in the cupboard in their places, blows his nose and
finally takes the crumpled wrapping paper from the table. He had given her a
ring, as he did every year. Nana is wearing thirteen rings on a thread round
her neck, because her fingers are swollen and inflamed. Alex had played guitar,
lit a candle and finally sat down in front of the chess board and given a commentary
on every move; Nana had watched him with her mouth open. Later he had read to
her from his diary and massaged her shoulders and back with a warm glove.

Sudden silence. The radio
batteries have run down. Alex looks everywhere, feels a quiet panic inside. He
looks in the drawers, under the bed and even in the rubbish bin. Finally he
takes the batteries out of the yellow plastic casing, shakes them and gains a couple
of minutes. A third, a fifth: the motif flies past his ear and right through
him.

Then they’re outside, at first
behind the trailer, where Alex supports Nana as she squats and breaths out
condensed breath. While they wait, they shiver. Alex leans forward, looks in
the hole in the ground and shovels snow over it with his foot. Her
pain-tortured face, her scrawny rear, her blue-frozen, long fingers… He should
have gone to the village and bought liquid paraffin at the chemist’s; his head
had been full of all the other things.

On a scrap of paper Alex had
noted:

1. Look for clothes, wash.

He had dealt with that the day
before. He had gone to the river and scrubbed all her old stuff with a root
brush. The power unit was still warm enough to dry the things; now he’s wearing
his best shirt. She’ll wear the cardigan they found on their last trip to the
sea.

2. Polish shoes.

He had done that too – Nana’s
brown boots, scratched, well worn, the leather faded.

3. Nail up the windows.

What on earth for, he thinks
now. What they’ve collected would be stolen or at the very least turned upside
down by the people who spend their nights by the river, grilling there and
getting drunk. As if a couple of pieces of chipboard could stop any of them… at
any rate he’s put his watch in an envelope and given it to the petrol pump
attendant on the road to Engsiek as a present.

He carries her into the house,
sets her down on the stool and starts to put on her bra, the cardigan and the
woollen skirt. Her knee joints crack. Once she slips to the side; he just
manages to hold her. Her skin smells of damp humus and semolina. The smell is
so familiar, that he misses it – physically misses it – when he’s outside,
shopping or fishing in the summer. In between he stands up, apologises for his
fingernail scratching her skin and kisses her on the lips. Finally he carefully
puts her spectacles on her nose

How’s it going?

A blink.

Shall we leave?

Outside he checks the tyres
and pours a pailful of cleaning water into the radiator. He bends over the cold
metal, scrubs the windscreen, greases rubber coatings and lubricates the
sunroof with a couple of drops of floor polish. Then he bends over the bonnet
and begins to polish traces of the past few years out of the dull paint. A
hawk. A stone which fell from the sky on the road to the forest. He presses his
lips together, scrubs and thinks of nothing. The sun comes through the clouds,
for the first time since the beginning of the year. He looks over to the
trailer on whose dull metal shell the sunbeams paint a patch of light.

They drive on the motorway.
The brightness dazzles them; gleaming white, only here and there does frozen
earth peek out from under the snow like a dirty pockmark. Electricity pylons on
the horizon, cold and stiff. The forest begins behind the hills north of the
canal. Suddenly there’s drizzle as there was when they met; he flashes the indicator,
presses the brake pedal and turns off.

He had thought of driving
until he couldn’t go any further, perhaps to the Öresund and of steering the
car against a bridge pier on a country road. He had thought about giving her
poison, Phenobarbital, in a shadowy apartment in Zürich. To let her drink it
from a glass, while some stranger stands opposite her with an impassive expression.
Asking her beforehand to sign a piece of paper, that that’s what she really
wants. Then he had seen the photos: How people roll their eyes, how their limbs
clench in their last difficult struggle. All the seconds in which one knows one
is dead and is yet still living, in which one presumably thinks, perhaps
regrets and hears the echo of one’s heartbeat in one’s head.

They drive east, towards the
sea. Before Engsiek there’s the forest. The old mill is on the B 76, by the
fields.

Let’s stop, says Alex, and
halts right by the side of the road. He winds down the side window, grabs
Nana’s coat and turns her a little on the seat, so that she can look out. Her
glasses are greasy. He takes them off, cleans them with a paper handkerchief
and then adjusts them on Nana’s nose. Nana screws up her eyes and nods, at
least he thinks so.

The mill is still standing,
but the front part of the restaurant has collapsed like puff pastry filled with
air. The plaster has crumbled away, the door is hanging off the hinges and the
village boys have scrawled their messages on the wall beside a window,
admiration for Hitler and other crap, just as they did when Alex’ parents met
here for the first time. That had been in winter, too, the fields bare and
desolate, the mill wheel stolen by looters, in the dried-up river bed a wolf
that had starved to death. They had spent the nights on the wooden floor next
to the millstone, in a fur that had come from Kiev with his grandfather’s coffin.

Will we go on?

A blink.

He flashes the indicator and
drives on.

They stop at traffic lights,
then at a petrol station, where he gets out and buys a bar of chocolate. He
breaks a piece off, carefully opens Nana’s mouth and places the chocolate on
her tongue.

What do you think, he says.

Nana doesn’t say anything, but
Alex sees from her eyes that it tastes good.

Do you remember, he says, what
you cooked at the mill?

Steamed red cabbage. Boiled veal.
Pancakes with forest berries. Glazed pears. Duck breast à l’orange. Trout from
the Westensee, whose stomachs, when she could still do it, she slit open with a
knife, to pull out the bloody innards. She set the innards aside and later made
soup with them. Alex had been secretly repelled, would rather have gone outside
and sorted boxes, swept the yard or polished the dull glasses. But he could
never bear to be alone for long; every time he had returned to the kitchen,
shoulders hunched, had sat down on the stool and watched Nana. Her hands,
stained and smooth, with nails she had filed and cut and sometimes even painted.
The apron. The low-cut neckline. Her feet in white sandals. This woman with the
sensitive face, stinking of fish, her fingers shining. A couple of times Alex
had suddenly climbed on the table, had grabbed her shoulders and kissed her on
the mouth; once they had even made love among the dead fish.

He stops at the side of the
road again, breathes deeply twice and puts another piece of chocolate in Nana’s
mouth. He sees how his hand trembles. Saliva dribbles from her lips. He catches
the saliva and rubs his fingers dry on his trousers.

They have never been able to
forget their time at the mill, the daily work and being together in the
evenings. Later they went there every Sunday. Nana was already very weak, but
the threshold of the dining room was low, and Nana only weighed 80 pounds. Alex
lifted her out of the seat every time, carried her like a bride over the
threshold and set her on a chair. The mill had already been sold again; the new
owner served them grilled sausage and coca-cola. Usually they were alone; only
now and then during the holidays did a young family drop in. Alex brought his grandfather’s binoculars and
they watched the deer grazing in the twilight at the edge of the forest.

Tastes good, Nana had said
once and bit into the sausage. The devil can cook.

She had never wanted a
wheelchair. Crutches yes, but no wheelchair. When she could no longer walk,
Alex had once slipped in the entry to the mill in winter; he had fallen
backwards and hurt his behind on the cobble stones. Frightened, Nana lay on his
stomach and had looked at Alex through her tinted glasses. She waited until he
was standing again. Then she laughed out loud. Tears ran down her cheeks, she
waved her arms about like a penguin, and she laughed, and Alex laughed with her
and tried to pull her up from the cold ground. The cook, a thin young guy with a
goatee beard saw them through the window and finally came running out of the
kitchen; meanwhile the tears on Nana’s chin had turned to ice.

Alex turns onto the forest
track and drives more slowly now. His feet are numb. There’s no feeling in his
hands, in his whole body; he hears nothing and sees only the track in front of
them, the glittering, slushy snow. It is as if the gift of human beings to
enter into contact with the world has left him for ever. The clearing, the sun
shining on it. He changes gear. Suddenly a shadow at the window, a boy scout,
fat, with a peaked cap and a walking stick. He greets Alex. Alex hesitates for
a moment and returns the greeting. Two more scouts are sitting wrapped in
blankets on a tarpaulin at the edge of the clearing and talking on their
phones; they have put up their tent in the thicket.

Alex comes to a halt and gets
out. They’re everywhere; one of them is even sitting in a tree and looking at
the meadows at the edge of the wood through a telescope.

Good afternoon, says the fat
one with the cap.

Good afternoon, says Alex.

The fat boy looks over to the
car and nods to Nana.

Are you lost?

No, says Alex. We often come
here.

We do too, said the fat boy.

There you go, says Alex

What do you want to do then,
says the fat boy.

Nothing, says Alex.

Do you need help?

No thanks, says Alex. But
thanks for the offer.

What’s wrong with the woman?
Is she your wife?

She’s pretty ill.

I’m sorry, says the fat boy.

It’s all right, says Alex.

He knows the boy; he’s the son
of an old eccentric, who was once friends with his father. The boy probably
doesn’t remember him any more, because it’s years since they met. Images of a
fair come to Alex’s mind, with a ferris wheel, candy floss and circus acts; a
stand with fish rolls “fresh from the mill stream” at a time when the mill
still belonged to his mother. His mother, as she sold the fish, at first
meticulously, in local costume, and years later stooped, a cigarette in one
hand, her hair sticking up everywhere, her eyes already red from alcohol in the
morning.

Why doesn’t she die like the
others, his mother had shouted. Put her in a home, so that you can take care of
the mill. To live for her, for a cripple. We need you!

She had cried and held Alex’
shoulders.

His father had sat there and
stared at the floor.

We’ll give you something, he
had said, so that she can be in Rebberg. That’s not so shabby. You can’t ruin
our future!

Alex goes into reverse gear
and turns the car. The fat boy stands stiffly at the edge of the track and
salutes. For a moment Alex thinks of driving to the trailer; he feels cold
sweat running down his back.

What is it? he says. What do
you think? What should we do now?

He turns the rear view mirror
to the side and sees Nana’s face in it, expressionless, facing the road. They
go on driving for a while. Then he stops again, this time by an open field. In
the distance a railway embankment. He waits almost five minutes; not a single
car comes by. He shuts his eyes, listens to Nana’s wheezing breaths, their rise
and fall. He tries to put a bit of chocolate on Nana’s tongue, but his hand is
shaking; the bar falls to the floor.

Say something, says Alex.
Please.

Nana stares in front of her.

He undoes the seat belts,
first hers, then his; then he takes off her scarf and lays his head in the warm
hollow beneath her chin. For minutes he hears her breathing. He wants to be
there always, on this day, which is rainy and yet sunny, wants to lie there always,
on her thin breast, holding her, and listening to her breathing, and thinking
what she’s thinking.

Then he gets out, goes to the
boot, takes out the box and puts the cold revolver into his jacket pocket. He
sits down in the car again and winds down the sun roof. He strokes Nana’s
cheek, covers her face with the scarf, holds the barrel to the back of her head
and presses the trigger.

Once
you have pressed the trigger, you will wait thirty seconds. You will force
yourself to look. That will be a problem: to look at her. You will look at her,
and if she is still breathing and moving, pull the trigger a second time. But
you have read about the signs of death: Some of them only appear after an hour.
You will not have that much time. You will feel her pulse, and if her eyes are
open you will close them. You will clasp her body as long as it is still warm.
Then you will place the barrel in the hollow under your chin. Place your free
hand on hers. Perhaps look at the sky.

Alex stares through the
windscreen. Something is coming along the railway embankment. First he sees the
red in his field of vision, then in front of his inner eye the word TRAIN
forms. He turns to Nana, tears the scarf from her head and gives her a push,
calls her name, but where her face was, Alex sees only a pulp of damp hair and
congealed blood. He screams; he clings to her, weeps and screams and strikes
the dashboard with his knees and fist. The gun has fallen to the floor; Alex
bends down, but can’t reach it. A vacuum is crushing the organs in his chest;
he cries out her name, bends down, pulls open the door, kneels on the frozen
earth and searches the floor of the car for the revolver. He bites a hole in the
inside of his cheek. Finally he feels the butt.

He stands up, goes away from
the car, stops for a moment. He doesn’t know where he is, what day it is, and
what his name is. He tries at least to remember his name, to remember something
that connects him to the world, to himself.

Suddenly a sentence comes to
mind: Then you will place the barrel in
the hollow under your chin.

He places the barrel under his
chin.

To the car first, he thinks.

He goes back to the car, pulls
open the door and heaves himself in. What he recognises of Nana is pale, has
become almost transparent. He carefully nudges her; her hand falls out of her
lap onto the handbrake, a dull thump. He thinks she’s breathing. He holds his
breath and stares at a point beyond her breast.

Perhaps she’s breathing.

He must get help. He sees the
inside of the skull in which the blood has coagulated into a black knot. He
pushes against the back rest. He takes a deep breath and puts the barrel of the
gun between his eyes, against his temples, finally puts it in his mouth.
Where’s the heart? In the middle, he thinks and puts the barrel to his chest.
You have to aim exactly in the middle. Alex sits there, panic-stricken. He
stares at the railway embankment, at the field in front of it, the
brown-sprinkled white of which has turned into a chaos of exploding colours. He
weeps and screams and then he falls silent. He counts to himself. He listens,
hears his heartbeat and lets the revolver sink down, gets out of the car,
stands still at first and then starts walking. He walks for a while. He doesn’t
think of anything. He cannot think of anything any more. He marches towards the
railway embankment.